[Users] openvz naming conventions; numeric vs symbolic

Steve Wray steve.wray at cwa.co.nz
Wed Aug 15 17:07:30 EDT 2007


Kir Kolyshkin wrote:
> Steve Wray wrote:
>   
>> Kir Kolyshkin wrote:
>>     
>>> See vzctl set --name
>>>   
>>>       
>> Well thats a nice start.
>>
>> Now, to follow on from that great progress, how do I get it so that
>> the directory where the root filesystem lives corresponds to the name
>> I set instead of the numeric VEID?
>>     
> No standard way.
>
> I guess you can create a symlink; something like this:
> vzctl set $VEID --name $VENAME --save
> (cd /vz/root && ln -s $VEID $VENAME)
>
> Same for /vz/private if you need it.
>   
I did find that after one has created a virtual machine configuration 
one can edit its config file and add:

VE_ROOT="/var/lib/vz/root/vz1"
VE_PRIVATE="/var/lib/vz/private/vz1"

for example. I have yet to figure out the 'vzctl create' commands 
though; they appear to require an OS template tarball. While I dropped a 
root filesystem tarball into the required place, vzctl create didn't 
like it. I'll keep plugging away.

OpenVZ looks pretty good for performance scaleability but what I'd love 
to see is better management scaleability.

If there are any tools which abstract away some of the detail for 
management of multiple virtual machines I'd like to know. I did try 
easyvz (http://sourceforge.net/projects/easyvz) but there were problems 
with the python dependencies. I run Debian Etch; when I tried to run the 
gui there were issues with strange characters in the python script.



>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>>     
>>> Steve Wray wrote:
>>>  
>>>       
>>>> Hi there,
>>>> I'm a long time user of Xen virtualisation and have been evaluating
>>>> OpenVZ as a replacement for certain applications.
>>>>
>>>> OpenVZ appears to be technically superior under certain conditions and
>>>> I hope to iron out the issues that I have come across.
>>>>
>>>> The main issue confronting me at this time is scalability of
>>>> management; OpenVZ may scale well with respect to performance and
>>>> resource usage but at this time I don't see it scaling well when it
>>>> comes to management of virtual machines.
>>>>
>>>> I am sure that I must be missing something obvious since its a pretty
>>>> basic issue. I've searched extensively for some info on this but found
>>>> nothing.
>>>>
>>>> The problem?
>>>>
>>>> Numeric rather than symbolic identification of virtual machines.
>>>>
>>>> When I start a domU (a Xen virtual machine) in Xen I direct 'xm
>>>> create' at the config file the name of which corresponds to the name
>>>> of that domU.
>>>>
>>>> When I list currently running machines in Xen I see a listing of the
>>>> names of the Xen domUs and their corresponding numeric IDs.
>>>>
>>>> When I create a logical volume for a Xen domU I create that volume
>>>> based on the name of the corresponding Xen instance.
>>>>
>>>> In each case I try to ensure consistency by making the names of the
>>>> Xen domUs correspond to the hostnames of the servers which those domUs
>>>> are running. Host foo is on the domU named foo and is in a logical
>>>> volume named foo. To start domU foo I run 'xm create
>>>> /etc/xen/domains/foo.conf'. This scales well and makes things very
>>>> nice and obvious.
>>>>
>>>> OpenVZ seems to do away with symbolic names referring in all instances
>>>> to numeric ids, a bit like not using DNS but putting an IP address
>>>> into a URL.
>>>>
>>>> I have an awful feeling that when the pager goes off at 2am the person
>>>> on call, bleary-eyed and tired, will make some horrible mistake when
>>>> trying to mentally map numeric identifiers to server hostnames. This
>>>> is what I mean by 'not scaling well'. Use of numeric identifiers may
>>>> work ok when there is only one or two, but when there may be a dozen
>>>> things will get out of hand.
>>>>
>>>> I am sure that there must be a way to use symbolic names instead of
>>>> numbers in OpenVZ but I can't for the life of me find out how.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> Users at openvz.org
>>>> https://openvz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>>>>     
>>>>         
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>>>   
>>>       
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>>     
>
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